Wireless technology enables portable communications, computing, and positioning, often within a single device. The value of information derived from an active connection to the World Wide Web while a user is both mobile and spatially positioned accurately is immense. Uses for this information include: asking for directions without stopping, identifying services along your route, accessing commercial invitations based mostly on proximity of a business to the mobile invitee, and requesting emergency services, among others.
Spatial coordinates of longitude, latitude, and elevation may be represented in a three-dimensional (3-D) coordinate system as x, y, and z, respectively. These coordinates, as well as a time associated with them and a unique identifier assigned to a transmission session of a subscriber using the service at that time, are collected routinely by providers of cellular telephone service. The session identifier enables one to establish a string of distinct spatial positions that may yield a pattern of the subscriber's movement, or lack thereof. These data are collected routinely and stored for various uses by the wireless service provider. In general these uses relate to billing, system performance evaluation, or planning for new capacity and the like. Other uses may be made of this data. For example, these “strings of data” may be aggregated over time, for a number of subscribers, and a dense aggregate pattern observed. From this pattern, precise spatial information about specific locations or areas may be derived, including 3-D coordinates suitable for accurate mapping.
Several patents and one patent application address mapping problems as associated with wireless device operation. None approach a method that the present inventors propose herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,132, Vehicle Locating and Communicating Method and Apparatus Using Cellular Telephone Network, to Wortham, Mar. 29, 1994, provides a means for locating and communicating with vehicles. A cell phone and microprocessor are carried in the vehicle. The microprocessor interrogates the cell phone to obtain location information from a message stream transmitted from various cell phone transmitter sites. This may be displayed within the vehicle and used to update vehicle location at a central monitoring site.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,150,961, Automated Traffic Mapping, to Alewine et al., Nov. 21, 2000, proposes a system that uses a system of mobile wireless units installed in multiple vehicles for purposes of mapping traffic. The wireless units provide both communications and location. The location of each vehicle is provided to both other such vehicles and a central monitoring station for purposes of monitoring traffic flow.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,400,690 B1, Dual Map System for Navigation and Wireless Communication, to Liu et al., Jun. 4, 2002, details a system that produces an empirical map of coverage of a wireless communication system by combining information from individual users of the system. The users must be equipped with a GPS receiver or located by other means such as triangulation from ground-based transmitters. The quality of the wireless transmission is also used as a parameter to develop the empirical maps.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2001/0007088 A1, Method and Navigation System for Display of Sections of a Digital Map Data Base as well as an Improved Operating Unit and Interface for Same, to Winter et al., Jul. 5, 2001 provides a method and system for displaying a predetermined portion of a digital map database together with a limited number of attributes, thus making the map easier to read where many attributes may otherwise be available.
To communicate an adequate spatial awareness, maps are needed to guide one from a known or starting position to a destination. Road locations, street names, landmarks, directions, etc., originate from an existing database of spatial information. A problem often encountered by those depending on commercial hardcopy maps or maps now available on the Internet is that sufficiently detailed digital spatial information is not available worldwide. Further, it is not available at the spatial accuracy that could be used optimally by existing and future wireless communication and positioning devices. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) produces digital maps at a scale of 1:24,000 with a National Map Accuracy Standard of 40 feet horizontal (for “well-defined points” only such as survey bench marks and major road intersections). In contrast, the stated positional error for one manufacturer of wireless remote locator devices is “several meters under certain circumstances.” Furthermore, the coverage of USGS 1:24,000 data is not complete even over some areas of the United States.
The problem is further compounded in that sufficiently detailed information is not available for most of the world and the vast majority of data that are available are not accurate enough to enable precise display of wireless positioning data relative to a displayed map's features. This reduces consumer confidence in precise destination route planning or spatial problem solving, for example. Optimized wireless mobile computing, communication, and positioning technology needs a quality of spatial information that is not available from standard mapping products. Thus, there is a need for a process that generates detailed, spatially accurate features by fully utilizing the capabilities of existing and future mobile wireless devices.